ABSTRACT
This chapter tracks the path of Indigenous schooling in Bolivia from the first half of the twentieth century up until 2019, with attention to its evolving social and political significance at each historical juncture. The main focus is on the Aymara-speaking highlanders, whose fight for education stemmed from their desire for alphabetic literacy and speaking skills in the dominant language, driven by their demand for territorial rights, in the early twentieth century. This path then saw shifts from a state ideology of cultural and linguistic homogenisation in the post-1952 Revolution years, to one of “unity with diversity” in the 1990s, through to the episteme of “decolonisation” post-2005. An ethnographic study is provided of teachers’ and education planners’ subjective experiences of these shifts. The research participants compare the 1994 neoliberal education reform with the education reform law of 2010, under the government of Evo Morales. There is a striking ideological contrast between these two regimes, while the will of the Indigenous organisations for their ‘own education’ (educación propia) system remains constant.
